I was getting more and more tired
Ruhama first sought medical attention while working abroad as a teacher. She says: “I was living in the centre of Africa. I had a wonderful job and a wonderful life, but I was getting more and more tired. I worked ten minutes’ walk away from where I lived, but I was secretly catching a taxi to work. I thought this is not quite right, it can’t just be the heat.”
Ruhama took advice to travel back home to the UK to see a nephrologist, where she was diagnosed with PKD. She says: “I now knew I had this disease but was told it might not bother me until I was older, and that I just needed to avoid urinary tract infections (UTIs). So, I went back to work in Africa.”
Ruhama was forced to move back to the UK permanently the following year, in 2010, due to a breast cancer diagnosis. Her hospital treatments finished in 2012. At this point, she was made aware that her kidney function was deteriorating, leading to renal failure in 2018. Peritoneal dialysis was needed to keep Ruhama alive while she waited to receive a transplant.
Kidney disease can often be an ‘invisible illness’ – at least, to those who don’t experience it themselves. Many of Ruhama’s colleagues were unaware, she says: “You couldn’t tell. I worked Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so the days when I was just flat out, they didn’t see. They just saw me at school, working, even though I had kidney fatigue and always felt cold.”
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- Source: https://www.kidneyresearchuk.org/2024/05/07/being-informed-earlier-could-have-protected-my-kidney-function/